Hotmail, Passports, and DRM

[Jason Dunn]

I received an interesting email today from <a href="http://cebooks.blogspot.com/">Jerry S. Justianto</a> on the topic of Hotmail, Passport, and DRM as it relates to eBooks. I've edited together some of his major points - this scenario could potentially be messy.<br /><br />"If I don't use my hotmail for a certain time, can someone take my ID? If so how about all the DRM5 ebooks that has been purchased and activated with my passport via hotmail account? Think of this scenario:<br />you need to buy DRM5 ebooks...then it ask you to activate your ebook reader...you go to passport.com, and it still remembers you have your hotmail account sometime ago... Your passport now activated your reader with your hotmail account... Life seems so simple, thanks Microsoft... You download your ebook, and how easily you can read it, no tech complexity... Then you change your active email because too many junk mails in hotmail... You never log in your hotmail account for more than 1 month... Your account is deleted... Someone else might taken your hotmail account? How about all those ebooks that were being activated with your hotmail account?"<br /><br />Unless I'm mistaken, this could easily happen today. I have a Passport account registered to my Hotmail account, but I've since created a new Passport account linked to my main email address. Both are swimming in spam, however, so if I do want to change it at some point in the future, what effect will that have on my DRM eBooks?<br /><br />Oh, wait, I don't own any DRM eBooks because I find the entire execution to be utterly asinine (why would I pay MORE for an eBook than for a hard cover book?). I haven't even activated my copy of MS Reader. :-)

[Ken Mattern]

Jason,

I've been following Jerry's site for quite a while and he has definately come up with a scary scenario. But to make things even scarier, over Crhistmas vacation I logged into my Hotmail accocunt before I left and then again 11 days later. My account had been completely wiped and I was told that I had not logged in for over 30 days. Yet I know for a fact that it was 11 days. The year had changed and I don't know if that had something to do with it.

This is too scary for words. but then again, like Jerry, I don't own any DRM-5 books. I stick with my own books.

Ken

[Kemas]

It is my understanding from MSN and Microsoft that they do not recycle e-mail addresses. I have one that I never use and every 30 days it gets shut down but I can easily re-activate it at any time... I think this is true of many ISPs, they don't recycle e-mail address like telephones.

Of course, as most of you may know the US Post Office, this only affects Americans (I hate that, if you live in Canada you are an American, just not a US citizen.. but I digress), wants to create an e-mail address system that will follow you for life. One man, one address. Period. I personally love the idea.

As for Spam... I ignore and delete. One day congress will pass a law making it illegal and hopefully find a way to enforce it down to the ISPs so that international spam can't conintue. THe whole world would love the US, for about 5 minutes, then we would piss the world off again... oh well.

[bandersnatch]

That's right. If your hotmail account turns off after a month, you lose your mail, but your passport name seems intact. I have a hotmail account that went bye-bye and I could still use my passport to log into zone.msn.com to play games. So it looks like this scenerio is a non-starter (thank goodness).

[James Bond]

The scenario is impossible. Although MS used to recycle email addresses (not sure about now), your passport quite obviously has a unique numeric ID that won't be recreated even if another with the same name (or address, or whatever) is created later. Email addresses get shut down because of the storage that is associated with them. Passports are kept since the storage overhead is small.

[Kilmerr]

Not gonna happen as they don't recycle email addresses. But being that Hotmail is soooooo trigger-happy and shuts down randomly and not at all on the supposed 30 day schedule (better check it daily) and Hotmail is spam-central. Hotmail is worthless. A dot.com free email era concept, now turned into a MSN/MS spam mailbox. And now they are going to charge for it...and in addition Yahoo mail will charge for extra basic services. Money for nothing, and the spam for free. :)

[Chubbergott]

If anybody is looking for a good example of what it it to be tied to a technology......

Before giving my Hotmail address to anybody, I started to get spam. I left it alone for three days and when I came back, there was more spam than a Monty Python sketch!

Oh dear, oh dear!

[burmashave]

Read Palm eBooks. They have a superb selection and their DRM solution makes sense. It does not require you to register with anyone. There is a free reader available for PPC, and I like it better than MS Reader.

Historically, consumers have rejected DRM solutions that are a pain. I have a feeling that Microsoft's over-blown efforts at DRM are not going to amount to much in terms of eBook publishing.

[Registered]

I personally would NEVER buy a DRM book too. None of my Reader products (desktop + PPC) are activated or ever will be.

0.2$

[burmashave]

I personally would NEVER buy a DRM book too. None of my Reader products (desktop + PPC) are activated or ever will be.

0.2$


Really, you should take a look at the PalmReader: http://www.peanutpress.com/. Their DRM is quite simple. You buy a book, download it and copy it to your PPC. When you first open the book, the Palm Reader prompts you to activate the book by entering your name and the credit card number used to purchase the book.

You only need to do this once, and you can install the book to as many devices as you want. However, you are discouraged from doing so because you have to use your credit card number to unlock the book on each device.

In other words, their system is the opposite of the MS solution. Users do not need to register their books with any authority. Proof that Palm's system works is the fact that they have a ton of titles, and their catalog is growing fast, so publishers must be happy with their DRM. Compare this to the paltry selection available for MS Reader. Plus, Peanut Press is selling titles, which means that purchasers are happy with their system.

And by the way, wouldn't 0.2$ be twenty cents? Has inflation hit the value of ideas? :wink:

[ironguy]

Based on comments here, it seems that the scenario can't happen. I have to ask though, "How d you know they don't recycle addresses after 6 months?" AOL used to do this.

A solution is to have MSN messenger log in evertime you connect to your computer. That way, your address is kept refreshed. I've had my MSN account for 2 years and haven't received a single e-mail that I considered spam. I never give it out and use it only for news alerts through MSN.

[Jonathan1]

Don't really care. Since I refuse to use .CRAP sorry .NET

May are praising it as this great revolution. Wait. Wait until the virus writers of the world, the hackers of the world figure out how to crack MS servers and send a virus down to every .NET enabled device. I'll just sit back with a Code Red in one hand and a Linux based PDA in the other and watch the world burn. I swear each day I become more and more a believer that Gates is the antichrist here to destroy humanity. :wink: